Category: Platforms

iPod shuffle. Apple’s Flash Music Player

apple iPod shuffleThe success of Apple’s iPod range is well known. They have to date sold over 10 million units and have total domination of the hard disk-based portable music players. The only market they weren’t in was the solid state memory, or Flash memory players. To address with the hope of being the winner there too, Jobs announced the Apple iPod shuffle.

Shown in iPod white it’s 3.3 inches x 0.98 x 0.33 (8.4 cm x 2.5 x 0.84) and weighs only 0.78 ounces (22.11g). In summary it’s very small, about the size of a pack of chewing gum.

The controls are very simple, numbering just five – play/pause; volume up and down; next and previous track. Unexpectedly it has no display, so there is no visual way to know which track is playing. Apple being Apple, worked this idea to their advantage, suggesting that receiving your music in a random, unexpected order was fun. We’ll see if the market agrees.

Connecting to either a Mac or PC via its USB 2.0 port, it also takes its charge onto its 12 hours battery this way. This is a great feature that players like the Jens MP-130 had used, which we found a real boon.

While we’re on the Jens MP-130, it had a really excellent microphone build into it which enabled quality recording of interviews and the like. It’s noticeable that the iPod shuffle doesn’t have a mic onboard or even a jack for an input. This is for playback only.

It comes in two models; 0.5 GB and 1GB – pretty beefy for a Flash player. Prices are $99 (~€75, ~£53) and $149 (~€113, ~£79) in the US, £69 (~€98, ~$130) and £99 (~€141, ~$187) in the UK and is “shipping from the factory” yesterday.

The integration with iTunes is strong and features AutoFill. This gives various methods of selecting music tracks to go onto the iPod shuffle, filling it to capacity.

The experience that we’ve had in the Digital Lifestyles office with USB music players is that the ones that have a clip-on lid end up having problems with the lid dropping off. The iPod Shuffle is using a removable lid as the attachment to the lanyard which then hangs around the neck.

The reaction throughout most of Jobs’s presentation was pretty ecstatic as is the norm, with them cheering and whooping on cue. Strangely during the presentation of the iPod shuffle, it was pretty restrained, even quiet. The only audible excitement was during the announcement of the price of the base model.

We’re sure Apple will be hoping the public has a more enthusiastic reaction to it. We’ll be getting our hands on it this Friday, so we will update you after that.

Apple iPod shuffle

UPDATED – Mac Mini Announced by Jobs – $499/£339

apple mini mac box In what isn’t a surprise move Steve Jobs has announced the Apple “Mac Mini”, a low cost addition to the Macintosh computer range. Priced at $499 (~€380, ~£265) and $599 (~€457, ~£319), it can sit in the palm on your hand (measuring 6.5 inches (16.51 cm) square and just 2 inches (5.08 cm) tall and weights just 2.9 pounds (1.32 kg). True to form for Apple, it looks great.

Disappointingly Apple plan to sell the Mac Mini for £339 (~$634) and £399 (~$746) in the UK. Which, when converted back in to dollars at current exchange rates, don’t sound quite so sweet. Quite why UK uses will have the privilege of paying more is currently unclear.

The bargain-basement prices are because it comes with quite a few things not included – like keyboard, mouse, screen – or “BYODKM, bring your own display, keyboard, and mouse” as Jobs put it.

What do you get for your money? The different prices give you either a 1.25GHz PowerPC G4 or a 1.42GHz (you know when they’re talking about 0.02 of a GHz they’re talking about a budget machine) processor and a 40GB or 80GB hard drive. Two included optical drives are available; a combo, that reads CD & DVD and writes CDs; or a SuperDrive, that reads and writes CDs & DVDs.

Interestingly, the video output is via DVI (Digital Video Interface) and support up to a 1920 x 1200 resolution. DVI is used on many Plasma TV and large LCD screens as the standard interface. Additional adaptors will enable the DVI to be connected to a VGA, S-video and composite video output.

Cleverly they are including lots of software – iLife 05 ( iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD and GarageBand); Quicken 2005 and AppleWorks 6, providing word processing and spreadsheets.

It’s connectors to the outside world are – One FireWire 400 port and two USB 2.0 ports. The keyboard and mouse (extra cost) can be connected using these. An optional internal Bluetooth module enabled the connection of a wireless keyboard and mouse. 10/100Mb Ethernet and a 56K modem.

Wireless networking is possible using the internally fitted AirPort Extreme Card – which comes at extra cost.

We see this as Apple’s chance to cash in on all of the non-Macintosh owning iPod users, whether they be computer-virgins or current PC owners who are looking to upgrade.

We were wondering what the final cost of the machines would be when spec’d up with wireless networking, etc. It appears that many other people around the planet were thinking the same thing, as the ordering section of the online Apple Store has fallen over from the demand.

This baby is going to sell – by the truck load. First truck load arriving 22 January 2005.

Apple Mac Mini
Watch Jobs keynote

SmartDeck from Griffin gives iPod control

Griffin SmartDeck iPodGriffin Technology has announced what they call SmartDeck Intelligent Cassette Technology.

At first glance it appears to be a “seen it” product, a bit of audio cassette-shaped plastic that you pop into your cassette player to let you play the music you’ve got on your digital music player.

Take another look beacuse this device is smarter than that. Rather than having to fumble for the control on your iPod while you should be concentrating on things like … driving. This little beauty lets you use the buttons on your cassette deck to control your iPod. The fast forward and rewind buttons take you to the next or previous playlist track; the Stop and pause buttons do as would be expected; and hitting Eject or selecting car stereo’s radio also put the iPod on pause.

How does it do it? The cassette adaptor has sensors on it (note the teeth inside the holes in the middle of it) and passes this information down a single white cable to the four-pin top accessory port on the top of the iPod. Clever isn’t it?

Griffin are also claiming it automatically sets optimal volume on the iPod for best audio quality and the devices innards are the highest-quality to give crystal clear quality sound.

It should be available in the second quarter of 2005, priced at $24.99 (~€19, ~£13.50). If you can’t wait until then to see it, it’s going to be on show on Booth #1917 at current MacWorld show.

Griffin SmartDeck

Philips WACS700 Wireless Music Center – Interesting

Philips WACS700 Wireless Music CenterPhilips used to strike us as a funny old company. They’ve been tremendously innovative. They had, after all, been a key players in the creation of many pieces of consumer technology; compact cassette; CD; DVD, but their products often looked like a dog’s breakfast.

About 18 months ago we noticed a change, as their design started becoming more “with it” (as I believe they used to call it in the ’60’s).

At CES last week they showed their Wireless Music Centre, WACS700 to the crowds. It doesn’t look too shabby, reminiscent of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (which may sound confusing that a film released in 1968, set in 2001 should look modern in 2005, but the films styling is near-timeless).

Equipped with a 40GB hard drive and its own 802.11g (54 Mbps) networking, it’s able to wirelessly stream music around your house to up to five satellite units. 750 CDs of music can be loaded on to it using the built in CD player or via the Ethernet port, which is also used to pull down information on the ripped CDs from the Gracenote CDDB database.

There are a couple of features that make it of particular interest.

It comes complete with a two-way remote control, which cunningly displays the currently playing track, as well as allowing the navigation your music.

The master unit has slim, built-in speakers using Philips Super Sound Panel Speaker technology, a nifty space saving trick to uniting tweeter and woofer into a single unit.

Satellite units can be configured for playback in a number of ways. Separate music can be played on each on; the same music on each (this is harder than it sounds due to fractional speed difference in wireless packet delivery) or a follow me feature that lets you take your music from one room to the next as you walk between rooms.

Available in the US from April 2005, the WACS700 will have a suggested retail price of US$999 including one satellite unit. Additional satellites will cost between US$200 and US$250. We’re waiting on Philips to find out European availability and pricing.

Philips

VisiFone, Ojo: Videophones Come Home

Viseon-VisiFoneEvery few years there are a number of announcements about the launch of new video phones. For decades the public have been told that this revolution is just around the corner.

For most of those years the means of transferring the speech and video information has been via a telephone line, initially a PSTN, then in the ’80’s, ISDN. Due to the limitation of the amount of bandwidth, using them was a pretty unsatisfactory experience with the video being ‘choppy’.

As broadband became more available, the bandwidth that video requires started to be come more widely installed in peoples homes and other places.

For quite a while this has been available to the technically savvy using software solutions available on desktops and laptops. By simply plugging in a cheap USB camera and installing some (often free) software, people have been able to chat and watch each other.

One instance sticks in my mind. When I was organising the Digital Lifestyles conference theme day at IBC 2003, one of the speakers, Stuart Cheshire, Ethernet Guru at Apple recounted his connecting to home. He had his hotel broadband connection, connected up his Apple iBook, slotted in an Apple iSight and, for the equivalent cost of a long distance call from Amsterdam to the US, he was able to chat to his family for as long as he wanted, with the added benefit that both he and his family where able to see each other, seeing the facial cue so important in a face-to-face conversation.

Now that broadband is an established fact for a large number of western households, there is a new wave of broadband, consumer-friendly devices that don’t require PC’s to function – and that’s going to make them usable by a range of generations.

Viseon used CES to launch it VisiFone, labelling it the Digital Home Telephone. They claim by keeping the communications digital from end-to-end, the free standing unit provides CD-quality audio and TV-quality video.

They claim one of the secrets to their success is their use of the latest chips from Texas Instruments (TI) specifically; TI’s newest IP phone system-on-a-chip, the TNETV1050, which provides enhanced digital voice quality and conferencing; and the DSP-based TMS320DM64x digital media processor, offering high quality, multi-channel video.

Viseon’s business approach is to sell the unit via broadband service providers. The first they have announced is a deal with well known VoIP provider, Vonage, who run services in the US, Mexico and of last week, the UK.

Another offering at CES was Ojo from Motorola, which they label the Personal Video Phone. It works on a similar principle of a screen and embedded camera on a stand. The Ojo’s large colour screen is 5.6-inch, 9 x 16 format, which they say frames the face better.

It uses an advanced MPEG-4 coding standard (H.264), which enables transmission of 30 frames-per-second video with synchronized audio at data rates as low as 110 Kbps.

Ojo differs from VisiFone in that it can also handle phone calls over ‘normal’ phone lines using its cordless handset.

Ojo should be available in the US from Spring 2005 at $799, plus an as-yet-undisclosed monthly service charge.

How long it will be before we have Video phones on the street, a la Blade Runner is unclear, but finally things appear to moving in the world on consumer-friendly videophone.

Viseon VisiFone
Motorola Ojo

Samsung 102-inch TV shown at CES

Samsung 102-inch PDP TVSamsung is showing a 102-inch Plasma Display Panel (PDP) TV at CES. Currently standing as the worlds largest TV, they’re upping the ante of their own 80-inch screen they announced back in January last year.

The gargantuan 102-inch screen is currently just for demonstration, but Samsung plan to start shipping their 80-inch PDP and 57-inch LCD screen in the US this year. The original costs spoken about for the 80-inch, the HPR8072 which planned for a May release, were a heart stopping $45,000 (~€34,000, ~£24,000). The 57-inch, LNR570D, will cost $17,999 (~€13,700, ~£9,600) and come out in June.

If you hadn’t guessed it from the dimensions, you can see from the photo that this 102-inch baby is large.

Samsung are putting serious effort into become recognised as a leader in TV screens of all technologies. They’re also showing a slim line Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) at CES and at the start of this week they announced a high resolution 21-inch single-panel, Organic Light-Emitting Diode (OLED) display.

Samsung

Digital Lifestyle extolled by Bill Gates at CES

In what has now become a tradition, Bill Gates opened the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas extolling the virtues of Digital Lifestyles (thanks for the plug Bill).

In a “casual” interview style, US TV chat show presenter, Conan O’Brien, lead Bill through the wonderful world of digital media.

O’Brien started his shtick with a great joke, “When Bill Gates walks onto this stage in a few minutes, the average net worth of each person in this room will be(come) $128 million.”. He then went on to be reasonably rude about most people in the industry. Of particular note was the “CES – The Movie” spoof casting, where well known characters in the industry were matched up with their acting doubles. It’s worth watching, just fire it up and jump to 11m 30s.

Bill Gates then came on stage to give Microsoft’s view of Digital Lifestyles.

Not surprisingly Microsoft pitches the PC as the centre of it, “The PC has a central role to play, (in that) it’s where it all comes together.”

As has been the case since the public started recognising the iPod and iTunes, Bill and his promotional videos took every opportunity to feature ‘other’ music players, while subtly highlighting the virtues of the Microsoft approach.

This covered “Windows Plays For Sure”, the certification process that labels all devices that are able to understand and adhere to Microsoft’s Digital Rights Management (DRM) scheme. Read as, music in Apple’s format can’t play on other devices except Apples.

For the trend spotters among you, Bill referred to this as a “rights management system”, dropping the Digital prefix.

He also pitched monthly subscription services where you have access to all of the music you desire – another thing that Apple iTunes doesn’t offer. He failed to mention that with most subscriptions services, the ability to play the music you’ve paid for access to, stops when the monthly subscriptions fees do.

Media Centre featured large with Gates announcing that PC manufacturers have sold 1.4 million Media Centre models worldwide so far.

Media Extenders, which enables households with networked homes to pull content from their Media Centres to rooms around the house were also brought up again. Dedicated boxes from companies like LG were mentioned as well as a software upgrade for Microsoft’s xBox to provide the same function. The fact that 6.3 million people had bought Halo 2, was also dropped into the conversation.

The LG example was of note. A dedicated DVR with DVD burner, it featured a cut-down version of the Media Center software that retained the familiar user interface (UI), while offering access to music and photo’s stored on the Media Centre PC. Not only that but content recorded on this dedicated device could be transferred to the Media Centre PC and in turn to a smartphone or Portable Media Centre (PMC).

To easily operate the Media Centre, the “simple, single remote control” was also touted, more than once. Microsoft have formed partnerships with Philips, NiveusMedia and Logitech to produce universal remote controls that work with Media Centre, as well as many other devices. All these remotes will feature a “signature” Green Start button. Bill had previously mentioned that some remote controls will have small colour screens on them, allowing video content to be shown on them.

New content partners also got a nod. Discovery will be creating “unique content” that fits on Media Center, with Yahoo and Fox Sports also getting a mention.

One key item was the launch of the Media Centre as a platform. Not just a means of accessing and playing back content, but of broadcasters creating interactive content specifically for it, that combines broadcast and IP delivered content using Online Spotlight. We feel this is the most important item to come out and will be covered in more detail in another piece shortly.

It’s also worth watching the video, if nothing else then to see Bill looking less than comfortable with the interview technique.

Bill Gates CES – Opening Speech

HDTV Support in HP Media Hubs

CES is coming. Prepare yourself for the flood.

In an effort to get heard above the noise of CES, HP has this morning announced a couple of products that will be capable of receiving and storing High Definition TV (HDTV).

The first is an extension to their current Digital Entertainment Center (DEC) range that will add high-definition ATSC (Advanced Television Standards Committee) tuning capabilities. Two models are expected to ship this spring with different storage, graphics card and tuning options.

The second is the industry’s first HDTV media hub which comes with dual-tuners and expected for release in autumn 2005. It will handle all of the now-expected digital photos, music and videos and act as a digital video recorder (DVR). While HD tuning cards have been available for some time, this is the first time that a mainstream company has announced a HDTV product.

We contacted HP for further details about the products support for the US Broadcast Flag, but as yet they were unable to provide it. Given the release date of the product is after the July 2005 compulsory support date, and that it’s a US-focused product it is highly likely that the equipment will support the Broadcast Flag.

Given HP partnership with Philips in the Video Content Protection System (VCPS), an FCC-approved technology designed to restrict the copying of video content to DVD, it is highly likely that this will be included too.

Of particular interest is HP’s inclusion of an “intuitive Electronic Programming Guide” designed by them to “allow consumers to easily find and record the content they want.” There are no details of this being a free or fee service.

We see this as HP’s move to become the gateway to access on-demand content of all sorts. This is further demonstrated by their mention of delivering “upgrades the device with new services.” It’s a smart move, placing themselves in this pivotal position before someone else gets in there to provide a service.

It’s not just computer-based equipment that HP is offering in HD world. They’ve also announced plans to introduce a full line of 17 new HDTVs and home theater projectors based on HP-developed “visual fidelity” technologies.

One of these is the spectacularly named “wobulation” technology, a patent-pending method to provide twice the resolution of digital projection displays without increasing the cost.

HP
ATSC
VCPS

500GB Hard Drive from Hitachi

Hitachi-7k-driveIn an effort to keep up with the demands of the ever growing appetite for digital storage, Hitachi has announced a 500-Gigabyte drive.

With the rise of Digital Obesity (the hoarding of digital data) and the continued growth of Digital Video Recorders (DVR’s), in particular the early days of availability of the High Definition TV (HDTV) DVRs, the demands for storage are growing drastically.

The 3.5-inch drive will be joining the DeskStar range of drives as the Deskstar 7K500.

When used in a DVR it will be able to hold around 200 hours of Standard Definition TV, a serious step up from the 40 to 80 hours now available.

For those of a hardcore technical nature, you’ll be excited to hear that Hitachi will be the first hard drive vendor to deliver all of the major design enhancements identified in the SATA II (second version of Serial ATA) specification, including a 3 Gb/s data transfer rate. Translated – the serial interface isn’t going to be what slows the path of data from the drive to the processor, that’s more likely to be restricted by the drive (817 Mb/s in this case). SATA II doubles the transfer rate of SATA 1.0.

The drives also feature what Hitachi is calling Smooth Stream Technology, which is based on the recently ratified ATA-7 AV Streaming Feature Set. Why is this important? It’s been designed to simultaneously lay down a number of large data streams (each HDTV 1080i stream runs at 19 Mbits/s) as well as smoothly handle data errors.

When handling AV (Audio Visual) information the accuracy of the information is of less importance than its fast transfer. If the video doesn’t arrive in time, the glitches that are seen on the screen are far more noticeable that one or two bits missing

Hitachi hopes to ship the 7K500 in Q1 2005. Hitachi
Serial ATA
ATA-7 Working Draft (doc)
ATA/ATAPI AV Streaming Command Set Usage Guidelines (doc)

TiVoToGo arrives

TiVo has finally announced the release of the long-anticipated TiVoToGo feature for their series 2 machines. As the name implies, TiVoToGo enables content that has been recorded on the well known Personal Video Recorder (PVR) to be transferred to other devices that support MPEG-2, such as PCs and portable players. Support for playback on many different machines is also provided.

This will be achieved through a free software upgrade that will be automatically uploaded to subscriber machines over the telephone line. TiVo are being considered and cautious about upgrading the software of remote machines, a wise move in our view. A small number of machines have had the new version deployed to them, to try to ensure any unexpected problems can be handled. Given this, the upgrading of all machines will take quite a while. Those in a rush (most TiVo owners we suspect) can apply for a priority upgrade. Those who register with this are warned that even this priority list will take “a few weeks” to upgrade.

Software on the receiving PC must also be upgraded to TiVo Desktop 2.0, which only supports Windows XP and 2000. The playback machine must also have a MPEG-2 CoDec installed to view the recordings.

Network connections on the TiVo will be required, cabled initially, followed by support for some 802.11g adaptors.

DVD burning supported later

Although not initially available, burning of the some content to DVD on DVD writer equipped PC’s will be supported.

TiVo have done a deal with Sonic Solutions, providers of DVD burning software, to provide a special version of Sonic MyDVD, which will be available for purchase. A free trial of this software is available in mid-January 2005.

Following pressure from the film studios, not all content will be burnable. A point of some controversy amongst many of the TiVo faithful. Content marked with a “don’t burn” flag will be excluded. It is not clear how much, if any, content will not be flagged like this.

What’s not supported

While TiVoToGo is a great step forward for TiVo owners, there are a few things that aren’t supported at launch.

The upgrade will not be available to DIRECTV DVR with TiVo machines, and the same applying to the TiVo Series1 machines.

Macintosh computers are not initially supported, although it it understood that this will be available later.

While TiVos with integrated DVD Players will be supported, DVD Recorders with TiVo models from Humax, Toshiba, and Pioneer will not receive the TiVoToGo feature until later this year – probably because they don’t support the “non-copy” flag when burning DVDs.

In the lead up to the consumer electronics show, CES, TiVo had to bring out this upgrade. As more of the general public become aware of the possibilities of carrying out these functions on their home computers, TiVo’s concern would be that consumers would simply replace their TiVo boxes. Only time will tell if they’ve acted quickly enough.

TiVoToGo
Sonic Solutions